I'm like you: special and unique.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Crashing at Athens! I was racing the amateur race, because I think there's less likelihood that assholes like Sundt will purposefully knock me down, which has become my perception of the pro race.

had a great crash, epic. Came out real banged up, real cut. I'm made of rubber i guess, because I have no broken bones.

The race is 20 laps of 1km=really fast with a big field of amateurs who've qualified earlier in the day from their respective category races. A cool format (race, qualify, race final infront of crowds prior to the pro races) allthough the day was crappy with on and off rain. I was totally on for the final, and spent the entire race at the front avoiding the big field, feeling strong and comfortable.

2 laps to go, got swarmed so I moved up on the outside going into the 4th turn. Too far outside and I was TIGHT against those metal fence barriers they use at big races. I knocked some knuckles on the fence (my pinky looks like a black/blue sausage now), controlled that enough to come away from the fence. Of course its about 10 guys wide and I pull myself away from the fence right into some handlebars. We lock, lean and I use the fence to shred myself. There seemed nothing I could do--I just made a mistake being on the outside with too many guys shoulder to shoulder at the end of the race.

Shoulder gash, about 2.5" long, 15 stitches. NASTY.

My knuckles look as if I shredded cheese with too much vigor. My forehead wailed on the fence or ground, not really sure. = 5 stitches

The doc said I can sit model, though.

Its such a big race, thousands of spectators and an amazing event. I'm super thankful to the nice people in the beer tent adjacent to my crash that pulled me off the course, warmed me up and applied pressure to my wounds.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

As I spoke about previously, I (or rather my team of 5 ) have to design a game of some sort for a class project. Its been an interesting process. When you don't have a specific problem to solve, its often difficult to put yourself in the right space to design something. "Go design a game" can be daunting, actually. And it was stressing me out.

But the best way to make a game is to just start playing. Playing promotes creativity. If you were asked to design a game, you may take your time thinking about rules and layout and how it works. But if you never dive in a actually play it, chances are it won't work.

So kelsey and I came up with a pretty solid game concept. Its a team oriented board game where you can collaborate with the opposite team for a better position. Although we're still iterating and working through it, I feel good about it. One of our criteria was to enable collaboration and this game was designed to do that. You only score points when you collaborate with either other team members or the opposite team (and they get bonus points for helping out the opposite team).

Playing a game while you make the rules with 5 or 6 people is really cool, its a pretty amazing collaborative space.

In the mean time, we've been playing tons of stuff: good games have been Risk, Settlers of Catan, Bohnanza the bean game. We tried to learn Puerto Rico, but it was far too complicated to do in one night (or it had terrible directions-not sure which one).

Saturday, January 16, 2010

This TED talk by Dan Pink (an author/thinker who has the design world all juiced up) is about motivation, and how its really not as straight forward as we think. Take 19minutes and watch this, and let it sink in. Whats really interesting and Pink uses as examples are companies that require employees to spend a fair percentage of their time working on ideas they have, off of their projects. Gore and Google do it, and they are really successful and innovative companies.

This basically explains the failure of children with little league parents, among other examples. Motivation has to come intrinsically.

Another inspiring text is a blog written by some creative director that I found here. I think these two are signficant for the future, in the sense that we are on the cusp of big systematic changes, that the design world will hopefully be leading.

3. User ownership. It is only based upon old models that the services
and products don't translate to their real use. I pay for 300+ channels
on digital TV. Why should I not be able to access the same from my
phone? my friends TV (I'm the one watching - locking it to a physical
address is old think)? On a public screen I see while on a flight? The
center of the product/service should be the user, not the false
constraints put upon it by the brand offering the service. Either flip
the model over so that I pay one fee and can get the content/product
anywhere, or go the other direction and offer micropayment so that I
pay for what I want, only when I want it. If they can meter hydro so
that I pay when I use it, surely the same can be done for TV, web, etc.

4.
Normal design. Personally, I've always been a big fan of modernism, or
what Jasper Morrison calls Super Normal Design. This type of restrained
design ethos I think will (and should) become more widely adopted.
You'd think in the 90 years or so since the Bauhaus, that modernism
would have caught on more in mainstream product design, but yet, it has
actually made little progress outside furniture and a few select
(mostly higher end) products. With the economy not so hot, I'd imagine
people will be buying less things. If those things are going to be
around longer than usual, the less you want your products to look out
of style/trend/fashion. In sync with my #1 point, if people are also
keeping objects longer because the objects are good (not just by
necessity), then this also applies.

Let's see less styling, please and
more solid design. Not every product should stand out on the counter or
in the home. Not everything needs to be a rocketship or look like an
alien. The perfect form for many objects is, in fact a box of some
sort. Crowns, curves and crazy surfaces have there place, but not in
much of what they are commonly applied to. Just because you can make a
complex surface in Alias, doesn't mean you should. If more designers
approached a design from a perspective of what is right, not what just
is possible, I think the results would be outstanding. Look at designs
from before the computer. They did have complex curves in some cases,
but only where they were really necessary as it wasn't just something
that could be slapped on anywhere. You needed to know the math, resolve
the edges and construct a curve. Not press a button. More Muji, More
old school Braun, less blobjects, please.

Our economy is quickly becoming mostly service-based (you know, all of our stuff isn't made here anymore). The integrated system/user-centered approach will soon be the norm, just because it makes sense and people will demand it.

One of my quarter projects is to design a game. This will be awesome. I'll keep you updated on our ideas and progress.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Saturday, January 09, 2010

I used to think my life was somewhat interesting, enough to blog about. Obviously that feeling has changed lately. But Myerson was here and reignited me a bit. As much as I hate feeding egos, I'll say I do find him really interesting. It was good to hang with him for an evening and show him some of Savannah. Thanks for stopping adam!

So i went mt biking today, here in Savannah. Maybe you've read from me prior that mtb'ing here is pretty slim, pretty flat, pretty much not epic. I took Ken, my new roommate out today, and within 5 minutes we were back in the car, packed up heading to the hospital. What I learned: if you are riding a teeter totter thing made for mountain bikes, make sure you are riding well behind the first person, because that thing will swing up, nearly knock your teeth out and give you a cleft palette-like GIANT cut. Ken's still in the ER as I write this. I was riding first, and feel really bad because he got ripped up-but either of us knew it was a giant moving teeter totter thingy.

So class this quarter is quite interesting. Facilitating Creative Thinking, Business, and Professional Practices. Creative thinking is waaaay cool, and with a new visiting professor of psychology, who studied under Csikszentmihalyi-who termed 'flow', which is cool-because that term is something we cyclist feel and talk about, although in a slightly different context. Interesting to read up on flow anyway

Business class is great too-i've never had any exposure to business and I'm eating it up. Sometimes I dream about making enough money to pay off my student loans. The expense of SCAD already created post graduate anxiety. Luckily the world is on the verge of a newer system of thinking and working, that which will involve creative thinkers more so than the past.

Whatever my future looks like, it should involve Bend, Or and a lot of cycling.